Characterization

"Be as careful of the books you read, as of the company you keep; for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as by the latter."--Paxton Hood

Introduction

NOTE: I am indebted to Chymera for the stimulating discussion on characterization.

Characterization. Why do you care?

Possibly you don't. Many kinds of nonfiction, and some kinds of fiction, don't require much in the way of character. If you can use characterization skills in a paper on mechanical solitons, I'm impressed. (And would like to read a copy.) But it's not expected. Similarly, some fiction focuses on setting or culture or (in hard science fiction) cool new technology/science, or uses characters as symbols (Abbott's Flatland comes to mind).

I'm assuming that you do care. Chances are you have a good idea why, and how to go about making characters that comes across as "people." Maybe you write stories where the characters and their conflicts are the story. Maybe you like to write about technological gewgaws but feel that gewgaws are more fun if the people around them are fun. Maybe you can't get through a book without identifying with the POV (point-of-view) character, so you work on sympathetic, likable and better-than-average characters so your readers will identify with their POVs. Maybe you just require that the POV is interesting, if not likable; and interesting people ought to have character. Maybe you're a plausibility fanatic and since people are complex things, you feel your characters should also be complex things.

Maybe, in the list above, you found a couple reasons that are alien or otherwise unfamiliar to you.

Below is a list of some methods that I've seen used to make characters "real" to the reader. Some of them overlap; I haven't attempted to make strict categorical distinctions.

Direct Characterization

Familiar to most of us, though more intrusive than other methods. The narrator says, "John was a weaselly man, thoroughly unlikable for his tendency to make clever puns." We're left taking the narrator's word for it. If we have an unreliable narrator, though, we may find that John is small but likable, and clever enough to see through the narrator's pretensions. Even this method leaves readers with room for their own judgements. Joyce Carol Oates' A Bloodsmoor Romance features a prudish, narrow-minded narrator with whom it is clear that the author disagrees every step of the way!

As a variant, we may have characters Anne, Brett, and Calvin making observations about Daryl. Whether the observations are accurate is another matter, and Anne, Brett and Calvin may end up revealing more about themselves than about Daryl (see Characterization via Conversation, below).

Characterization via Action

Actions do speak louder than words sometimes. Character Zoe may claim that she's kind to animals and a sympathetic, upstanding member of the community, but if she goes on to ignore a wounded squirrel and sleep with her neighbor's husband, we know what Zoe is really like. Or maybe character Abe doesn't say much, but when his daddy confronts him about that cut-down cherry tree, he admits that he did it instead of lying to avoid punishment. (It's apocryphal, but it's a useful illustration.)

Characterization via Conversation

A subset of the above. Sometimes what a character says (especially when compared with his/her actions) can tell you something about him/her. If she talks a lot about her neighbors, she's a gossip. If she likes to dissect other people's motives, she's an armchair psychologist. Or if she doesn't talk much in groups, but will confide her deepest secrets to her teddy bear, maybe she's shy or socially inhibited.

One of the best examples of this is Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants"--because the story is told almost entirely in dialogue. The reader is left to make inferences about the situation. On the flip side, I had to have the story explained to me the first time I read it.

Characterization via Situation

This is where the setting and situation have a direct influence on how the reader perceives the character. A strong-willed, independent woman in a chauvinistic male society isn't the same thing as a strong-willed, independent woman in a radical feminist society, even if all personality traits are the same. Or, for another example, a happy, well-adjusted person from a loving family and peaceful childhood is different from a happy well-adjusted person from a broken home and abusive childhood as a refugee.

A good example of this type of characterization is Dianora in Guy Gavriel Kay's fantasy Tigana. Dianora is a beautiful and witty woman, one of the mistresses of Brandin of Ygrath, a foreign conqueror king. However, as the story progresses, we learn that she comes from one of the conquered territories, and is torn between loyalty to her people and loyalty to the man she has come to love, despite herself, all of which casts her in a more sympathetic light.

Characterization via Motif

Some readers have trouble with this method because of its obliqueness: instead of expressing a character's moods and reactions "directly," the author captures them in the form of a motif. If the local birds are always seen in panic whenever one of the characters is in a frightening situation, the birds are a motif.

The best example I've seen of this is Patricia McKillip's fantasy Song for the Basilisk. For Damiet, colors and music show how she feels. For Rook/Caladrius, rooks and images of fire reveal his emotions. So the setting isn't just a backdrop, it is (a projection of) the (POV) character to some extent. You have to pay attention to how the surroundings and events are described in order to understand their emotional context.

* * *